New Hampshire Sen. Judd Gregg is said by the Clinton administration to be holding up essential money for U.N. peacekeeping forces in Sierra Leone, Kosovo, East Timor and Congo. But there is a question of whether Sen. Gregg’s intransigence or the administration’s weak policies is the real culprit. Sen. Gregg, chairman of the Appropriations subcommittee that oversees the State Department, may be using an overly blunt instrument, but his resistance to the administration’s “capitulation” to terrorists in Sierra Leone is valid and deserves the support of his colleagues.

Sen. Gregg is specifically objecting to a policy that has the United Nations, with the encouragement of the United States, agreeing to amnesty and power sharing for rebel forces who “shoot, rape and hack their way to power,” specifically the rebel’s leader, Foday Sankoh. The senator is tying up $226 million the United States already has agreed to pay as its share of U.N. peacekeeping duties worldwide. He has suggested that he is willing to consider releasing funds for Kosovo and East Timor, but wants new terms for a peace agreement in Sierra Leone, terms that address the atrocities committed by the rebels.

This is all terribly inconvenient for an international body trying to keep peace in a violent world. But given the results of appeasement as a substitute for not getting too deeply involved in chronically troubled places, it is the right answer now. The alternative is to ignore the kidnapping, torture and maiming that marked the rebels’ path; and that is to invite more of the same deplorable acts in the future.

Realists will point out that the United States cannot be involved as arbitor in every dispute the world endures — if we are to inject ourselves further into Sierra Leone, then why not troops in Sri Lanka or Ethiopia? It is a fair point. Of course the United States cannot be everywhere, but it should do what it can when the opportunity presents itself. Sen. Gregg has seen an opportunity and he has, properly, seized it.

The administration should follow him.